You know, I'm starting to wonder about this guy's sanity

I refer, of course, to President Bush, who according to Seymour Hersh is contemplating the use of nuclear weapons against Iran to halt its nuclear programme.

One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites.

(An unidentified "former senior intelligence official") went on, “Nuclear planners go through extensive training and learn the technical details of damage and fallout—we’re talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don’t have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out”—remove the nuclear option—“they’re shouted down.”

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success, the former intelligence official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.’ ”

The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the Administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians and in policy circles. He called it “a juggernaut that has to be stopped.” He also confirmed that some senior officers and officials were considering resigning over the issue. “There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,” the adviser told me. “This goes to high levels."

Hersh goes on to say that the top brass is adamantly against using nukes, but that they're probably the only way to be certain of destroying key Iranian nuclear facilities. He goes on to talk about the status of the Iranian nuclear programme and about the increasing tension between hawks in Washington and their dismayed potential allies in Europe.

I assume we all remember how crazy I thought airstrikes would be. Well, if Hersh is right, and the administration is seriously considering deploying nuclear weapons on the battlefield for the first time in 60 years (and the third time in history) you can multiply my sentiment that these guys are crazy a hundredfold. Nuking a Muslim country that, whatever the paranoid fears of neoconservatives, poses no threat to the security of the United States would be about as surefire a way to create legions of terrorists as I can imagine. It makes the invasion of Iraq look like cool, level-headed rationalism.

And it's exactly what you might expect from a President who drivels like this:

Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’”

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

Indeed.

You really have to be very, very stupid indeed to compare the threat posed by Adolf Hitler, the supreme leader of the most industrialized nation in Europe, with Europe's best military at his command, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is a subordinate leader of an impoverished nation with a military that spends 1 % of what the United States military does, on far less advanced equipment. Start a world war? The Iranians would be comprehensively thrashed in a shooting war with Israel, never mind the States.

Finally, there's an extremely disturbing note of messianic fervour in the second paragraph, where Bush is said to believe that he must do what "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do." You know, George, if you can keep your head about you when all around you others are losing theirs, it just might mean you haven't grasped the situation.

The fate of the world is in the hands of a stupid, arrogant man who does not listen to people who know what they're talking about. It's gonna be a long, long, 33 months.

Thanks, incidentally, to Jay for pointing out the story in the first place.